International development organizations increasingly use "participatory development" approaches to improve the effectiveness of their programs. Participatory frameworks are commonly limited in scope and funder-driven; these top-down approaches to participation have proven to be both ineffective, and at times, contradictory in their impacts. This article describes Malawi's Participatory Action for School Improvement (PASI) project, which was an effort to transform participatory development approaches in international development education by engaging communities as full partners in the school improvement process. By acknowledging our own ideological intentions and attempting to work with community leaders to shift power dynamics within communities and between communities and funding bodies, PASI fueled significant positive changes in school functioning at a very small cost. The article concludes that PASI might represent a generative community-level cash transfer approach to participatory development.